Rail workers struggling to pay bills are "scared" of a real terms cut to their wages if the Network Rail strike, the largest on the railways in 30 years, fails.
Darren Pilling, 55, was stood on the picket outside Lime Street Station on Thursday, the second day of the three-day strike. The North West regional council secretary of the Rail and Maritime Transport union (RMT) said: "You can hear the rowdiness behind me. It's a very well attended picket line, morale is extremely high - probably something to do with the weather - and the support that we've had from the general public and the wider trade union movement is magnificent."
Many rail workers haven't had a pay rise since 2019, and negotiations between the RMT and Network Rail are at a sticking point, with the union opposed to a 3% pay rise along with modernisation measures, which would include cuts to safety jobs and an increase in working hours. This is up from an original offer of 1%, but below the union's demand of 7%, itself below inflation.
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Darren said: "My wage is a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. There are people there who are on much less than I am, and they're telling me that they're hurting. And I know they're hurting, because it's not just them who are telling me. My cousins are telling me, my brother's telling me, my sister's telling me, my mother, my gran, everybody, all our friends in the community - everybody is hurting. There are people over there now who are experiencing real poverty."
Karl Schofield, 35, is "feeling the strain" of losing three days of pay like the more than 40,000 other rail workers on strike. Despite already struggling to pay bills, getting rid of his car due to the cost, and taking his daughter on picnics instead of paid-for activities she enjoys, Karl said he "can't afford not to" strike.
A pay rise not in line with the rising cost of living would be "devastating" for this 35-year-old, who's worked on the railways for a decade. He told the ECHO: "The thought of another real terms pay cut scares me. We're not looking at getting a pay rise, we're just trying to keep in line with inflation, because anything under inflation is a real terms pay cut. We're getting pushed further and further onto the breadline."
This week, Merseyrail came to a deal with general grade workers who are members of the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association (TSSA) union, after an overwhelming majority of union members voted in favour of accepting a 7.1% pay deal with the transport operator. This would give hope to striking RMT members, who weren't part of the Merseyrail dispute, if they felt Network Rail and rail companies were free to negotiate.
The union accused the Conservative government of capping pay rises at 3% and of pushing for modernisation measures. The RMT said it isn't opposed to modernisation, but warned it could be a way of making terms and conditions "fundamentally inferior", according to Daren Ireland, the North West regional organiser for the RMT.
Network Rail denies the government has urged it to cap pay rises, and rail bosses suggested there isn't the money for higher offers. Steve Montgomery, chair of the Rail Delivery Group, which represents rail companies, said: "Taxpayers have provided the equivalent of about £600 per household since covid and passenger numbers are still only at around 75% of pre pandemic levels. We need to bring rail up to date so that we attract more people back and take no more than our fair share from the public purse. We ask the RMT's leadership to call off these damaging strikes and continue talks to reach a deal that is fair to staff and taxpayers, and which secures a bright, long-term future of our railways."
Train companies paid out nearly £800m to shareholders last year, with FirstGroup, the UK's largest train operator, boasting about profits being "ahead of expectation" this year, openDemocracy reports. The independent media platform also reported the CEOs of the country's six biggest train companies were paid a combined salary of more than £5m in 2020.
Rail workers are wondering where their slice of the pie is, and they're not alone in calling for higher pay rises while moving towards industrial action. Criminal barristers start four weeks of strikes next week, British Airways ground and cabin crew voted for strike action last week, Stagecoach drivers in Merseyside will be on strike next week, and teachers and NHS workers are weighing up the option.
Carmel O'Boyle, a nurse in Liverpool, previously told the ECHO she "spends a fair bit of time shedding tears" at stories of colleagues "desperate to feed to their kids". She said they "cannot go on with another pay cut this year" and the country "will see more nurses in poverty" if they're given a below inflation pay rise.
Two members of Liverpool John Moores University branch of the University and College Union (UCU) showed up at the picket outside Lime Street Station on Thursday, June 28. Bee Hughes, branch chair and a member of the UCU's national executive, said: "Their fight is never an isolated fight. It's fighting for everybody. They're really showing the way for other workers to get angry, get agitated and push for change."
Bee, who spent eight years with the insecurity of casual contracts until two years ago, sees parallels between the RMT strike and the UCU's fight against casualisation and falling wages. Bee, a lecturer at LJMU, fears this is "pushing a whole generation out of the sector".
They said: "Even though a lot of UCU members are relatively well paid, we are currently in dispute and Unison are currently in dispute over pay because we've suffered a massive [real terms] wage decrease over the last 10 years, which is exacerbated by not just a gender pay gap, but there's also race pay gap across the sector, as well as a disability pay gap and an LGBT+ pay gap."
Fellow UCU member Aggelos Panayiotopoulos, a tourism and events lecturer at LJMU, said: "It's important to expose the hypocrisy of the government. They have been talking about essential workers - the concept came in during Covid-19, and it was all about all these people who are actually running the country and not sitting in an office. It is important to understand that their working conditions matter. Their pay matters. Their lives matter."
According to the Mirror, Prime Minister Boris Johnson told reporters travelling with him in Rwanda: "We've got to make the railways run economically for the very benefit of the railway workers themselves and their families. There's no point having a railway system in this country that's so uneconomic that you keep having to put ticket prices up and you have to drive more and more people off the railways. You can't go on with practices like walking time, with ticket offices that sell very few tickets. You need to modernise."
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